


Volatile Memory

by Jessepinwheel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: AU of an AU, Eldritch Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gen, Obi-Wan Kenobi Gets a Hug, Possession, That's Not How The Force Works (Star Wars), but like. low key, not that you have to read the main one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 15:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29173596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessepinwheel/pseuds/Jessepinwheel
Summary: Obi-Wan is seventeen and reeling from the end of the Melida/Daan's war when he tries to return to Coruscant and the Jedi Order he had left behind. In one world, the Force sends him away to find his footing and grow, safely away from its all-consuming power. In this one, it sends him home to the Temple, swallowing him whole in the process.Or: Vokara Che adopts a possessed traumatized seventeen-year-old boy. Because somebody has to.
Relationships: Vokara Che & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 27
Kudos: 420
Collections: Jedi Journals, favourite fics from a galaxy far far away





	Volatile Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Volatile memory is a type of memory storage that requires constant power. If power is lost, the information is lost.
> 
> I was rereading Asynchronous Circuit and I thought hey wouldn't it be funny if Obi-Wan actually made it back to the Jedi Temple when he was seventeen? so I wrote it on my tumblr and meant for it to be short but it was not short, so I figured might as well put it up here too.
> 
> If you haven't read Asynchronous Circuit and don't want to, you don't have to. Nothing that happens in that is really relevant here.
> 
> this one is just for fun. don't take it too serious now.

When Obi-Wan is seventeen, raw from war and living out in the galaxy on his own, he makes his way back to Coruscant. He’s wounded in the Force in a way no Jedi ever should, and he’s experienced things no youngling ever should, but he is alive and alone and he has nowhere else to go. In one world, the Force takes him, body and soul, and sends him away--for his safety, or perhaps for some other unknowable reason. In this one, it listens to his pleas and delivers him home to family and friends.

To the Jedi Temple.

It is Yoda who finds him first. Sensing a disturbance in the middle of the night that resonates in his old bones like a dirge of years past, he follows the Force to the Room of a Thousand Fountains and comes face to face with a ghost. Maybe ghost isn’t the right word--the boy is wearing clothes more appropriate for a spacer than a Jedi and he’s older than he ever was at the Temple, with hair reaching past his shoulders and stubble on his cheeks--but he is unmistakably Obi-Wan Kenobi, the boy whose pyre they had burned three years ago.

Obi-Wan is sitting at the water’s edge near one of the many waterfalls like he had done so many times as a crecheling, but it’s not the same. His expression is blank, his eyes are unseeing, and his body is unnaturally still--he isn’t even breathing. In his lap, his hands are clasped, or they would be, if one hadn’t been amputated at the wrist.

That more than anything shakes Yoda from his thoughts. Whatever has happened to Obi-Wan, he has been hurt and he needs help. Maybe they are too late to solve everything, but they can at least do this. 

Yoda calls out to Obi-Wan. There’s no response--not even an indication that he had heard. He reaches out through the Force and finds something…peculiar there. Obi-Wan doesn’t feel like himself. He doesn’t feel like a _person_ at all. He feels like a force of nature, something sentient but also-not-quite. There’s no discrete emotions or thoughts to discern, just a maelstrom of Light and feelings as if channeling the heart of the Temple itself.

The Force folds itself around Obi-Wan like a protective cloak, so intensely powerful that it blots out the boy’s spirit itself. It’s something Yoda has only seen once or twice before--a Jedi’s spirit broken so thoroughly that the Force takes residence in their body and consumes them entirely. For all that Obi-Wan’s body is here, he may be as good as dead already.

But still, they cannot simply let him be. Yoda tugs at Obi-Wan’s sleeve. “Obi-Wan,” he says. “Come to the Halls of Healing, can you?”

Obi-Wan still does not respond, but lets himself be coaxed to stand, then to follow Yoda to the Halls. He has a slight limp, but walks on his own power with no difficulty.

Knight Vokara Che takes charge of Obi-Wan’s care as soon as she finds out about him. It’s a trying examination. Whatever state Obi-Wan has been left in, it has made him sensitive to emotions and intentions, to the point where anyone who is fearful of him or otherwise frightening is stopped from approaching him--a barrier that cannot be overridden by any Force use they know of--and the disallowed individuals includes several Healers, much to Vokara’s dismay. From those he does allow to approach, he can clearly understand verbal commands and complies with them easily--eerily so--but can only respond nonverbally through the Force, much like crechelings who have not yet learned to speak. Unlike crechelings, Obi-Wan’s base emotions are almost impossible to discern and his projections are precise and clear. While Vokara has no idea how _conscious_ Obi-Wan is with the state of his spirit as it is, he is clearly still _aware_. Even like this, Vokara can feel Obi-Wan recognizes her and trusts her deeply.

She’s not sure she deserves it.

She makes her report to a grim Council. She doesn’t know everything about what has happened to Obi-Wan, but she’s seen his injuries and can make her own educated guesses. Besides the amputated hand (and it’s such a messy amputation that Vokara shudders to think how it happened), Obi-Wan is grossly underfed and covered in scars from blaster shots and burns and shrapnel--war injuries. If that wasn’t bad enough, there are thick overlapping bands of scar tissue all over his back, unmistakably from some kind of torture. There is little that can be done for any of it at this point--the injuries are old and long since healed over.

Spiritually, the Force pulses so powerfully through him that there’s no detectable trace of the boy himself. Trying to probe his mind any more than a cursory examination is like trying to walk through a tornado, and anyone who tries to delve into it is at risk of becoming trapped by it.

At the end of this all, she speaks directly to the Council. How could this have happened? How could they have failed one of their children so badly?

There are explanations, but nothing that satisfies her. Shame is heavy in the chambers, with the weight of their mistakes and the spirit of a boy who should be dead, but is not, and very well may soon be.

Obi-Wan will probably not live more than a month. Three months, at most--that is the longest any Jedi has ever continued vital processes after breaking their spirit. The question is simply what to do with him until then. There’s a heated discussion about it between the Councilors, the best way to care for Obi-Wan for as long as they can, but no consensus. Of course there isn’t, for something like this.

“I’ll talk to him,” Vokara says.

The offer to return to Master Jinn is met with such _panic_ that he practically physically recoils from it, and most other options are met with lukewarm disinterest. He doesn’t care to return to the Initiate dormitories. He’s apprehensive of staying with any Councilor. He has no interest in staying in the Halls beyond his receiving medical care.

Vokara takes a deep breath. “Obi-Wan, maybe…would you like to stay with me?”

That’s met with a questioning feeling, then a vivid sensation of walking through the Halls. For some reason, Obi-Wan’s sense memory of places is exceptionally strong--he’s always been this way, but it’s much easier to notice now that he has no verbal communication at all. Even his sense of people is tied to it, and it takes Vokara a moment to parse that he means the actual location of the Halls and not her as a person.

“No,” Vokara says, “I don’t live in the Halls of Healing. I have an actual living space, just like all other Jedi.”

Obi-Wan gives the mental equivalent of a shrug. He’s nervous for some reason--of causing trouble?

“Obi-Wan,” Vokara says softly. “You are not a burden. You would _never_ be a burden. I would be honored to have you stay with me for as long as you want to.”

Something softly pleased and _surprised_ lights up in Obi-Wan’s spirit, and it makes Vokara’s heart hurt even more. Just about anyone in the Temple would open their door for him, if only he asked, and yet after all this time he cannot seem to grasp that.

They have truly failed him in ways she is only now beginning to understand.

Vokara reaches out to him through the Force, projecting comfort and peace, and pulls him into a hug. Obi-Wan seems to briefly go into shock before relaxing into it and wrapping his arms around her. His fingers curl into her robe and he lets out a wave of such intense _loneliness_ that Vokara wants to cry.

Obi-Wan’s been hurt so badly, he’s been alone for so long when no Jedi ever should be, but he is home now, and they will do everything they can to make things right.

* * *

Obi-Wan moves into Vokara’s quarters the next day without difficulty. He has no belongings except what he was wearing when he came to the Temple--his clothes, a handful of credits, an expired ration bar, and an empty blaster pistol. Vokara gets him clothes and other personal effects from the quartermaster and brings him to her quarters.

Vokara does not have a Padawan suite--she has never felt herself suited to taking on an apprentice and her work in the Halls of Healing has left her with little time to do so--but her quarters are more than large enough for two and she can requisition another bed and a privacy screen if that suits Obi-Wan, or move to a larger set of rooms to accommodate him.

This is where Vokara runs into the next challenge: in addition to not breathing, Obi-Wan does not sleep. If asked to, he will sit or lay down and even close his eyes, but the Force within him will not subside, and his awareness will never dim. The closest Vokara can manage is to direct him through a guided meditation to something like a hibernation or healing trance, which he will unfailingly maintain for a full night. Opening herself to him is intense, like throwing herself directly into the Force, and she feels very much like she is not communing just with Obi-Wan, but with the Force itself.

Please let him rest, she tells it each night. He’s been through so much. He’s home now. I’m here for him now, and so is everyone else.

She does not know if the Force hears her, but either way it quiets and lets Obi-Wan slip into something approximating sleep, cross-legged and still on the common area floor.

Obi-Wan does not have a routine. Most days, he will stay in their quarters, or follow her to the Halls. When younglings come to the Halls, he will go to their side and comfort them--even without the ability to speak, he manages it quickly and effectively in a way that shows long practice. Sometimes, if they are badly injured, he will take their pain and even heal their wounds. It scares Vokara, honestly. Force Healing is not a commonly taught skill, nor is it one that can be simply _used_. It’s dangerous for the user at the best of times, but Obi-Wan does not seem to be affected. But then again, Obi-Wan seems to be _made_ of Force at the moment. Perhaps that mitigates the risks.

Strangely, almost none of these younglings seem to remember his presence, much less his assistance.

“I had a nice dream,” one of them says when asked. “One of my friends was there and he made me feel better.” They look up at Vokara. “He seemed so sad, though. Why was he so sad?”

Vokara wishes she knew.

On other days, Obi-Wan…wanders. When Vokara isn’t looking, he’ll disappear from their quarters and she won’t find him until hours later, walking through the corridors as if asleep or drifting through one of the many gardens. Nobody seems to notice him as he passes--as if he is a ghost, invisible and untouchable, even as they part to make way for him.

She doesn’t understand it. He’s _not_ a ghost. He _is_ alive and physical--she has testimony from other Healers and the Council and he appears on holos and video footage, though he does not seem to enjoy being filmed.

“The Force is shielding him,” Mace tells her when he comes over for tea one afternoon to check on Obi-Wan. “It shielded him from those who were scared of him and now it shields people from seeing him in the Temple.”

“Why would it do that?” Vokara asks. “There’s no danger for him here in the Temple.”

Mace frowns. “I don’t think he knows that, Knight Che. I’ve known him since he was an Initiate, and he…he’s been scared to take up space for a long time. I don’t think his Padawanship helped much in that regard, nor whatever happened to him when he left the Order at Melida/Daan. I think being unseen makes him feel safer. After all, Obi-Wan left when he was thirteen. Most of us are still strangers to him.”

Vokara sips her tea and glances over to where Obi-Wan is kneeling on the floor, gazing out into the distance. The Force within him is as calm as it ever is, and doesn’t seem entirely present--like it is searching for something. There has been no indication he has heard anything they have said, and Vokara’s suspicions grow that Obi-Wan is actually blind and deaf in his current state, navigating on his sense of the Force alone.

“Maybe it would help to have his friends see him,” Vokara says. “Especially now that he’s as healthy as he can be, other than getting him to eat more.”

That was another thing--Obi-Wan didn’t need to eat or drink, but would do so if asked, which was fine except for the fact that he wouldn’t _digest_ any meals, either, unless Vokara nudged him with the Force to let his bodily processes run. She’s coaxed him into one meal a day, and he’s gained back weight slowly but much faster than expected--an indication that he isn’t actually _using_ calories to move or generate energy. He might be moving by the power of the Force alone. It’s unprecedented and frankly concerning.

“It might be cruel to his friends,” Mace says. “He isn’t exactly the way he was, and we have no idea how long he’ll survive. They’ve already mourned him at his funeral.”

Vokara can see his point--how cruel would it be, to reveal that Obi-Wan is not actually dead, but is instead actively dying? How cruel would it be to have him die a second time?

Still, she says, “If it were me, I would want to know. Even if I could only see my friend again for a day, I would want that opportunity to say goodbye.”

Mace gives a moment of silence in acknowledgement. He knows as well as anyone that some wounds do not ever heal completely. He bows his head. “I’ll speak to them, then. Would you bring them here?”

“Here or the Halls,” Vokara says. “I think it’ll help. He must miss them dearly.”

* * *

It is Bant Eerin who wishes to see him first. Not surprising, considering her relationship with him.

Before Bant arrives, Obi-Wan shaves his stubble and washes his face. It is _extremely_ disconcerting to watch him use a straight razor with a completely blank expression his eyes--he doesn’t even use a mirror. Vokara gets the sense that he doesn’t personally care about his appearance, but doesn’t want to disrespect his friends by looking entirely disheveled. Vokara’s not sure what it means when he’s had no trouble looking like he has for her or for the Council.

Personal grooming thus complete, Obi-Wan tugs on her sleeve and holds out a hair tie, projecting a sense memory of long silky hair gathered into bunches between fingers--his crechemaster’s, if Vokara isn’t mistaken. 

“You’d like me to braid your hair?” Vokara asks.

Obi-Wan responds in the affirmative with a small sense of shame, and the memory shifts to sharp pain and the smell of rot and infection in a hand that no longer exists. Of course. With only one hand, Obi-Wan is physically incapable of braiding his hair. With how well he navigates without it, it’s sometimes easy to forget.

Vokara nods and takes the hair tie. Obi-Wan’s eyes flutter closed as she brushes his hair, the most physical response he’s had of anything in the last tenday since returning to the Temple, and she deftly braids his hair into a single neat 3-plait that settles between his shoulder blades. With his face shaved and his hair pulled back, he looks even younger than he already does.

Vokara’s still thinking about that when Bant arrives in the Halls of Healing that day.

Bant and Obi-Wan’s reunion goes about as well as expected, which is to say, Bant flings her arms around him and cries. She tries to apologize for everything she could have done and didn’t, only for Obi-Wan to press back through the Force that she has nothing to apologize for.

She remembered him, after all. That was all he ever wanted--someone who would take him back. Someone to come home to.

“I’ll always take you back,” Bant sobs. “You’re my best friend, Obi. My brother. Always.”

The two of them talk without words. Bant has known him since they were in the creche and she knows his language in the Force--she leans against his side with her eyes closed and lets the images and sounds and feelings wash over her, responding in kind. It’s not exactly the same as it was back then--he feels different, more intense in many ways and yet so strangely detached and distant, but it’s still _Obi-Wan_ in there, deep down. She can feel it.

She asks him what happened, and he answers.

It’s not at all coherent--not a linear progression of past to present to future, because Obi-Wan had never seen the world that way--it’s jumbled in time and place, but Bant takes it all in. Bombs, blasters, blood, death, and violence. Pain--so much of it. Some of it, she’s seen already in her dreams, but most of it is a shock. It’s worse than anything she could have imagined--worse than any of them should ever have to go through.

She shudders under the weight of it all, holding onto Obi-Wan’s shoulder for support. The Force reaches back to her, apologetic and filled with Light that leaches away the pain and dulls the painful memories.

“I’m sorry,” she says when she gets control of herself again. “I’m sorry you had to go through all of that.”

Obi-Wan apologizes for making her experience it, even if he took it back afterwards.

“No, it’s okay,” Bant says. “I can carry this with you if you’ll let me. You’re not alone, Obi.”

She hugs him again, and around her the Force seems to sigh in relief. Obi-Wan hugs her back, and for a moment, everything seems to be okay.

* * *

There’s many of these visits over the course of the next month, from all of Obi-Wan’s friends, and even from Bruck Chun one time, who is not exactly a friend. There’s not a lot to say on that occasion, except that Bruck apologizes for what he did when he was younger. There’s no knowing what exchange occurs between the two after that, because Bruck refuses to say and does not visit Obi-Wan a second time.

Some conversations are more productive than others--Obi-Wan is able to respond fairly well to objective inquiries like what happened to him or what he’s planning to do, and he can react well enough when told about current events, but he’s simply not _present_ enough to answer most questions about how he feels or what he wants, and can only answer that he is alive and alone and has nowhere to go.

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” Quinlan tells him. “You’re here. We’re here, too.”

Inevitably, for all that Obi-Wan is able to communicate, he’s not exactly capable of _conversation,_ and that makes words run out sooner rather than later. Most people report that the beacon-like presence of the Force makes him comfortable to be with, even in silence, but it is also not uncommon for visitors to end these conversations in tears. There’s just so much _emotion_ in Obi-Wan, sadness and pain and fear and anger and loneliness and so many things else that it’s sometimes simply difficult to bear.

Qui-Gon Jinn visits the Halls of Healing a few times, as all active Jedi do, but he passes Obi-Wan in the corridors without even seeing him. The third time it happens, Vokara suspects Obi-Wan is doing it on purpose. She asks, and this is how she learns of the exact way Obi-Wan left the Jedi Order.

Obi-Wan was not supposed to come back. That was the agreement--he would stay with the Young and Melida/Daan and he would not return. He would not be a Jedi.

Qui-Gon would be ashamed to see him here--to know he had broken his word and was unable to commit to the choice he had made, and had broken his vows to the Jedi in earnest. Qui-Gon would be disappointed one final time to learn that Obi-Wan was everything he’d been judged to be: angry and impulsive and destined to Fall.

It’s cowardly to hide from Qui-Gon, but he can’t stand to face those fears.

“Oh, Obi-Wan,” Vokara says. “That isn’t true. It wasn’t fair of him to make you make that choice, and you had no way of knowing what would happen when you left.”

He had, though--and memory-visions flash of pasts and presents on Melida/Daan, a war stretching centuries back and centuries forward--hundreds and thousands of lives lost if he had not intervened. He’d known, when he’d left the Order, that he would kill. That he would break his vows. He’d even known that he would probably die in the process, but at least the war would end, and what was his life against so many?

Vokara closes her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Obi-Wan. You were thirteen. You never should have had to make that choice.”

Obi-Wan grasps her hand and projects the sense memory of the battlefields and carnage. There’s the smell of blood and blaster fire and dirt under his nails and screaming in the distance. He’s holding someone, a young girl. A young boy. The face changes and there’s so many of them, each of another youngling, now dead.

Maybe he never should have had to make that choice, but they never had a choice at all.

* * *

It is a month and a half later when Obi-Wan finally wakes up for the first time. This is a pleasant surprise because nobody expected him to wake up in the first place.

Vokara feels it like a ripple through the Force--a sudden absence of the power she’s grown accustomed to--and it jerks her out of bed in an instant, fearing the absolute worst. She finds Obi-Wan curled up on the common area floor, gasping for breath. The Force around him feels fractured and pained, like an open wound, and Vokara goes to help him the best she can.

She can soothe some of the pain in the Force, but there’s little else she can do but support him until he gains his bearings. The Force of the Temple is still pulsing through him, but she can sense him halting its flow with the desperation of a man treading water in the open ocean--he has absolutely no mental shielding, and it feels very much like his soul has been torn apart.

He should not, by any metric, be alive.

His eyes find hers and widen. A rasping sound passes his throat as he tries to speak, and Vokara presses against him with the Force. He flinches from the mental contact, physically pulling away, and Vokara has to catch him before he falls over.

“I’m going to get you some water, okay? Everything will be okay, Obi-Wan,” she says.

He closes his eyes and curls up tighter.

Vokara has him drink some water. “Healer Che?” Obi-Wan asks, his voice barely more than a whisper, quiet from at least a month of silence. “Where am I? What’s happening?”

He’s so scared. He’s young and frightened and when Vokara pulls him into a hug and holds him close, he clings to her desperately without even understanding why.

Apparently, Obi-Wan does not remember anything about or since returning to the Temple. Vokara explains what she can, but she can feel Obi-Wan’s consciousness slipping again as he’s unable to hold back the torrent of the Force. He cries into her shoulder in the final moments of lucidity, until the Force takes him again and his voice goes still and silent.

Vokara holds him tightly for a while longer, trying to soothe the boy’s spirit that she can’t even feel anymore, but _must_ still be there. He’d been conscious for all of four minutes, and the implications of it have shaken her to the core.

Obi-Wan should not be alive, but he _is._

His soul has been so damaged that the Force has swallowed him whole, but he’s _still there._ He is alive and he is alone and he has nowhere to go.

This…changes things.

How are they supposed to act, when they know Obi-Wan is still alive--not just his body, but his spirit as well? What are they supposed to do, now that they know he is _not_ destined for a swift death, but is still trapped in the Force? They try to call him back with no success, and trying Force suppression nearly kills him. There’s nothing they can do to help Obi-Wan, and yet…the lucid moments slowly become longer and more frequent--from a few minutes every few weeks to an hour every few days.

He can never remember anything that has occurred when he was fully taken by the Force and it’s obvious that this frightens him terribly. Vokara makes sure he’s never alone so if he wakes up, there’s always someone with him. His Padawan friends often stay by his side while studying, letting him listen as they go through coursework and gossip. It’s not clear if he understands what’s going on, but he seems to appreciate the company nonetheless.

“His spirit is growing stronger,” Vokara tells the Council six months after Obi-Wan has returned to the Temple. “He’s acclimatizing to the Temple’s Force. With the way his soul is damaged, he has no way to keep it from consuming him--so he seems to be simply…merging with it.”

“You mean he’s becoming one with the Force?” Master Dooku asks. “You mean he has become some kind of _ghost_?”

“I don’t know,” Vokara says. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Of course she hasn’t. Nobody has.

* * *

By the time Obi-Wan is nineteen, he has become lucid more often than not. He can hold entire conversations, though he prefers to remain nonverbal, he expresses interest in people and what is occurring around the Temple, and he makes active decisions about what he wants to do each day.

He finally speaks to Vokara about his amputated hand, and they work to get a prosthesis. Not a cybernetic one--his condition makes it unsafe to get cybernetics, and in any case, he doesn’t want all the surgeries. Obi-Wan gets a wood hand with a lacquered finish and engraved floral patterns, with doll’s joints so he can move the fingers and wrist into different positions. The strange thing is that sometimes, when he isn’t paying attention, it moves like a biological hand. This is only one way in which it becomes obvious that his immersion in the Force has changed him.

He still hibernates instead of sleeping, he stops eating completely and rarely speaks, and his eyes always seem a little bit glassy.

“I’m not blind,” Obi-Wan says when asked. “I can still see. The Force is so bright it’s just easier not to, most of the time.”

He explains, in bits and pieces over the course of several weeks, that he isn’t always in full control of his body--he can direct it easily enough, but it’s like he’s pulling his own puppet strings instead of acting through it. It makes him seem slower than he is, and his body language and facial expressions are often deadened because of it. He can’t see or hear or feel well unless he’s properly seated in his body, and the more time goes on, the harder it is for him to fill his body with his own spirit--with time, he might truly become a ghost.

“What do you want to do?” Vokara asks him one evening.

“I don’t want to disappear,” Obi-Wan says softly, fearfully. His hands are wrapped around a mug of tea that has long since gone cold. “I want to be here with my friends and family.”

“What else do you want?”

Obi-Wan falls silent, and Vokara feels the memories of cold mines in Bandomeer, of dead battlefields across Melida/Daan. There is the feeling of hair being braided, laughter between Padawans across gardens, the smell of tea in Qui-Gon’s kitchen early in the morning. There is longing for years past, years taken from the moment he left the Order and took a path he never should have been forced to consider.

Obi-Wan wants, as he always did, to help. He wants to be _useful_ , the way his friends are, the way the Masters are, the way every Jedi strives to be. He wants the close companionship of his fellow Padawans, the safety of his home in the Temple, and the mentorship and love of a Master who will teach him to be the best he can be. He wants to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and devote himself fully to the Force and to the people across the galaxy he has sworn to help. He wants something worth fighting for.

He wants to be a Jedi Knight.

Of all the things they can do for Obi-Wan, that is not one of them. He has no control over the Force and no ability to shield. A training bond would be actively dangerous for whatever Master chooses him. They don’t know what would happen if Obi-Wan left the Temple, but chances are, he would go into the Force for good.

But Obi-Wan is, and always will be, a Jedi. He was raised in the Temple and he can always find a home in it. They will make something work.

“Would you want to become a Healer?” Vokara asks. “I know it isn’t the same as Knighthood, but you would be able to work, and you would be able to help the Temple, if that’s what you want.”

Obi-Wan looks up at her, his eyes slowly focusing on her face. Incredulity radiates clear through the Force.

“If you want to, if you’re dedicated, I can take you on as an apprentice,” Vokara says. “It’s not the same as a Padawanship. I can’t teach you saberwork or diplomacy or take you around the galaxy to help people across all the different planets. But I can teach you. I can teach skills you’ve never had the chance to learn before, skills that can help your fellow Jedi and perhaps one day save their lives. I would stand by your side and teach you everything I know, if you want it. I would gladly give that to you.”

Obi-Wan reaches for her, projecting memory of lost duels, failed assignments, reprimands and recriminations from Qui-Gon Jinn. Of other Initiates and Padawans that are stronger, smarter, kinder.

Vokara sets her hand on top of Obi-Wan’s. “I don’t want to take other people as apprentices. I want to teach you.”

“I can’t even use the Force,” Obi-Wan rasps. “What kind of Healer could I possibly be?”

“One who will do everything he can to help,” Vokara says. “One who will care no matter if it is an enemy or a friend. The Force helps Healing, but most Healing has nothing to do with the Force and everything to do with medicine and the body. It’s a very difficult discipline, especially in the Jedi Temple where we have so many different species. And we always need more Healers.”

Obi-Wan looks down and away, his emotions turbulent and unreadable like static. “I’ll think about it.”

That time next week, Vokara has officially taken Obi-Wan on as her new apprentice.

* * *

Obi-Wan is difficult to teach. It’s not that he is a bad student, as he seems to believe of himself, but the simple fact that he spends most of his waking hours halfway out of the physical plane means he can do very little learning from a datapad. It is, after all, difficult to read when you cannot see.

Obi-Wan makes an effort to bring himself back into his body so he can learn--it’s obviously difficult, because he moves stiffly like he cannot remember how to use his own flesh and blood. He works at it with the kind of stubbornness only he could ever display, making himself human for bursts of minutes at a time to go over diagrams and learn a Healer’s tools. No matter how stubborn he is, it is not enough to hold back the Force entirely for more than a couple hours on a good day.

For other times, Vokara uses the Force to teach him--sharing memories and showing him to perceive and evaluate a body’s systems through the Force alone--a skill that he unsurprisingly excels at, when he is so deeply entrenched in the Force already. It is this way that Obi-Wan finds out firsthand what the Force has done to his body--frozen it entirely. He does not breathe, his heart does not beat, he does not sleep or eat, and there is no electrical impulse in his brain. When he is cut, there is no guarantee he will bleed, and his metabolic processes have stopped entirely, even when he is lucid. He is, by any medical definition, dead. He has been for months now.

The realization doesn’t seem to shock him very much at all.

“I think I died at Melida/Daan,” he says late one night. “When I ripped the Force out of myself to try and survive what I saw there. I shouldn’t have done it, but there were so many people dying all around me, all the time. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Vokara doesn’t know how to respond to that, except to think that perhaps his premature funeral was not so premature after all. Out loud, she says, once again, that she is sorry.

“You don’t need to be. It happened a long time ago,” Obi-Wan replies. “I’m not in pain anymore. I haven’t been since I returned to the Temple.”

Vokara shakes her head and hugs him tightly. Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to understand why she’s doing it, but he closes his eyes and squeezes her back.

The breakthrough in Obi-Wan’s training comes two months in, when they realize there is a very simple way to bypass Obi-Wan’s difficulties with observing the physical world--if he cannot use his own senses, he can share Vokara’s. In theory, he is simply sharing memory in real time--a sort of waking trance state that lets him connect to another Jedi while remaining ambulatory and nominally aware of his own body. In practice, Vokara feels Obi-Wan’s presence nestling at the back of her mind and the burn of his and the Temple’s twined Light flowing through her veins and thinks, rather superstitiously, that this must be quite similar to how a possession might feel. He shadows her work through the Halls, fingers gripped in the back of her robe with eyes unseeing and blank as he trails after her automatically, observing intently from the inside of her own mind as she mentally commentates and explains her judgements.

It is, to use a crude term, creepy. Obi-Wan may be a gracious guest when he settles in Vokara’s mind, but it does nothing to hide the fact that he bypasses all her shields without difficulty and is, with the Temple’s Force behind him, infinitely more powerful than she is. She has no doubt that the only thing preventing this kind of connection from becoming an _actual_ possession is Obi-Wan’s moral objections to it, not to mention his general difficulties using a physical body. It is all too easy to imagine how an ability like this could be abused in the hands of someone less honorable. 

But ignoring the _strangeness_ of Obi-Wan’s methods, there is no doubt of their efficacy--he learns in leaps and bounds, absorbing knowledge at an incredible rate. Vokara is not unaware of Obi-Wan’s academic performance when he was an Initiate--just below the fiftieth percentile with several comments from his Masters that he was perceptive and eager to learn, but also easily distractable, impulsive, and exceptionally poor at articulating his thoughts.

From her own observation Vokara finds this: Obi-Wan’s memory is excellent and he does not overlook details and he draws connections easily. His attention issues are mostly mitigated when he is genuinely intrigued by a subject and is given an outlet for his more excitable tendencies--an independent project to devote his energy to, or a difficult task to take a swing at. His reported awkwardness and difficulties in articulating himself are mostly bypassed when he does not speak--he is reasonably good at gathering and organizing his thoughts, especially for a youngling whose education was paused from ages thirteen to nineteen, but verbal speech in particular makes him freeze up. It’s easy to see why he would struggle in a classroom environment, but all signs indicate he would have flourished under the individual care of a Master.

Vokara doesn’t understand how Qui-Gon could have abandoned him so easily.

Obi-Wan learns and learns and learns. His unconventional methods are not without consequences--Vokara finds herself beginning to sink into the Force at times without meaning to, and there is one notable instance where she finds herself not _quite_ seated in her body when she wakes in the middle of the night. She only recognizes the feeling from Obi-Wan’s memories, and she makes her way safely back, but it panics her, that she might be losing connection with her body, too.

The next morning, Obi-Wan peers at her with something approximating horror, and in evening meditation, she hears him saying, “You can have me--you’ll always have me. But you can’t have Master Che. It’s not her time yet. People need her, so leave her alone.”

Vokara doesn’t know if she believes in the Force being truly sentient, but when Obi-Wan finishes speaking, she feels the Force loosen around her like binding ropes suddenly cut, and there’s an atmosphere that is almost apologetic. Suddenly feeling exhausted, she slumps against the door frame and closes her eyes. She thinks, not for the first time, that she had no idea what she’d gotten into when she’d taken Obi-Wan in. She doesn’t regret it for a moment, but she wonders how things might have shaken out differently--how Obi-Wan has shaped not just his own fate, but those of all around him.

Already, he is doing work in the Halls of Healing. Already, he has saved lives and helped Jedi in ways nobody else can--he is on every team that diagnoses and treats spiritual injuries because he is the only one who can see and understand them with such clarity. And, it must not be forgotten that after what has happened to Obi-Wan, he is unfathomably _powerful._

He is twenty-two when a relief mission gone catastrophically wrong brings in too many patients--Jedi and non-Jedi alike. Their team works to resuscitate Master Crusat and fails--Vokara _feels_ her die. Obi-Wan, mired in the desperation to _save_ so many lives that have been cut short too soon, can only do what is described as _throwing_ his soul from his body. He floods through with Force, channeling the heart of the Temple itself, his body going slack as if pulled on strings. He moves to Crusat’s side and grasps her hand in his, so intensely Light that it’s almost physically visible. He breathes in, healing her wounds in front of their eyes, and he breathes out, her heart beginning to beat once more.

Master Crusat’s eyes open, awake and aware, and the Healers shake off the shock and attend to her.

Obi-Wan doesn’t stop. He moves through the panic of the emergency wing and people part to let him through without even realizing what they’re doing. He stops by the most critical patients and heals them, channeling the power of pure _Force_ in a way that would have killed any normal Healer instantly. One by one, he works through the room, his expression blank in a way Vokara hasn’t seen in almost a year.

Vokara should be proud of him saving lives, but she can feel nothing but fear as she watches him progress. She cannot shake off the sight of him _bringing back the dead_ , nor of him accomplishing what some of their greatest healers never could. She cannot release the fear that grips her when she sees his eyes as empty as they were when she first examined him in this room five years ago. The Force grips him more tightly than it ever has, and she cannot sense his spirit at all, and fears the worst.

Of twelve critical patients, they lose only one. Without Obi-Wan’s intervention, it could have been as many as seven.

When the dust settles, Obi-Wan remains caught in the Force, blank and unmoving, and Vokara tries to call him back, she tries to ask the Force to release him, she tries to reach for him herself, but wherever he has gone, it is beyond her reach.

She has to put him in a room in the Halls, and attaches vital monitors that are utterly useless to monitor his complete absence of vital signs. She, and some of his friends, sits vigil at his side every night, speaking to him and feeling his listless responses. It’s four full days before the faintest shadow of awareness crosses his eyes again, and Vokara’s heart jumps.

“Obi-Wan,” she says, her hands clasping his, “please come back. Your family is waiting for you--it’s too soon for you to go. You can’t disappear yet.”

It’s a tenday’s work to coax him back, though Vokara doesn’t know if everyone who spoke to him actually made any difference when it could very well have just been his own stubborn self. He blinks blearily at the crowd that has gathered around his bed and cries right then and there, throwing himself into his friends’ arms.

“You’re back,” Bant says, clutching at his robes. “You’re back, Obi. Don’t do that to us ever again.”

“What were you thinking?” Quinlan asks.

Obi-Wan is silent for a long moment, then says, “I asked the Force if I could save those people. It told me yes. If I let go, it would use me to save those people. So I let go.”

“You _threw your soul out of your body!”_ Quinlan shouts.

“People would have died if I hadn’t. I’m supposed to be a Healer--I need to heal people, and in that moment, it was better to be more Force than Obi-Wan, so that’s what I did,” Obi-Wan says softly.

“You could have died!” Quinlan retorts.

Obi-Wan frowns, but doesn’t refute the point. “I’m…sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

There’s more words and crying and hugs, but at the end of it all, everyone is asleep at Obi-Wan’s side except Vokara.

Obi-Wan looks up at her. “I did the right thing, didn’t I? I saved those people--I felt it. I had to throw myself into the Force to pull their spirits back. Before the Force took them and they actually died.” 

Vokara closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She’s not even sure if Obi-Wan realizes those people he saved _were_ dead, but then again, for him, death must mean something very different. “As a Healer, I’m proud of you,” she says slowly. “You saved those lives when no one else could have. I can’t reprimand you for taking action like you did.”

Surprise flickers through Obi-Wan at the praise.

“But as a Master, you scared me terribly,” Vokara says. “I was sure that you had killed yourself, and there is no decent parent alive who wants to see their son die, even to save others. Please, Obi-Wan, for your sake and ours, don’t do that again. You’ve worked so hard to keep ahold of yourself despite the Force trying to tear you apart day in and day out. You did that for a reason.”

“But what if it happens again? What if I have to give myself over to the Force to save someone because nobody else can?” Obi-Wan asks.

Vokara sighs. “Obi-Wan, Healers are not meant to sacrifice themselves. You are supposed to help who you can to the best of your ability without causing harm to either your patient _or yourself_. You cannot help people if you die to save a person.”

“They’re important people, though.”

“You are important, too, Obi-Wan,” Vokara says. “And you deserve to live just as much as everyone else does.”

Obi-Wan looks down, not really sure how to respond to that.

“What happened?” Vokara asks after a long silence. “You threw yourself into the Force. It didn’t take you three weeks to bring those souls back.”

“The Force held me,” Obi-Wan says. “It wanted me to stay. It told me I could have peace if I would just let go and let it take me. It would take care of my body and protect you and Bant and Quinlan and everyone else I cared about, and I’d be safe where I belonged.” He pauses. “I considered it. It’s tiring sometimes, to live. Everything is so difficult and physical. The Force wants me to go with it all the time, and it’s a struggle sometimes to remember why I shouldn’t.”

“Obi-Wan…”

“I came back in the end,” Obi-Wan says. “I told the Force I was okay with things being difficult, because my family and home was here. There’ll be time for things to be easy later, but there won’t always be time for me to be with you and everyone else.”

“And the Force let you go?” Vokara asks.

“I promised I’d go back eventually,” Obi-Wan says. “I tell it that every night, and I mean it. I’m meant to be in the Force. I don’t think I can be like…this, and not.” He presses his hand to his chest. “But the Force is loose on time schedules. It can wait while I spend my time with you.” He frowns. “Does that make me a bad Jedi? I’m directly going against the will of the Force, just so I can be comfortable and safe with people I care about. That’s selfish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s selfish to want to be safe and loved, Obi-Wan,” Vokara replies.

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. He pauses. “Then is it okay if I ask for a hug?”

Obviously, Vokara responds by pulling him into a hug. “Of course it is, you silly boy.”

Obi-Wan presses his face into her shoulder and murmurs, “I love you, Master Che. Thank you so much. For everything.”

“I love you, too, Obi-Wan.”

* * *

Time passes. Obi-Wan earns his Healer’s robes, though he’s still got a lot to learn before he’s done being Vokara’s apprentice. He’s able to remain lucid almost all the time, except for when he meditates each night and allows the Force to pour itself into his body and use it as it pleases. He--or the Force inhabiting him--spends most nights haunting the Temple, drifting across currents down corridors and across gardens and inevitably scaring the living daylights out of Jedi taking a late-night stroll.

He does, inevitably, deliberately let the Force take him many more times to heal people who cannot otherwise be saved, but he’s never so reckless with it again, and he always comes back as soon as he can.

He remains a ghost to many of the Temple Jedi--invisible and untouchable except in rumors and strange sightings. Some Jedi, like Qui-Gon, never learn of his presence in the Temple. But the Healers know him and trust him, Vokara is so proud of him, and his friends are often there to see him and share stories of their exploits in the galaxy.

Obi-Wan may not exactly be alive, but he is certainly not alone, and he is home where he should be.

“I don’t think I was meant to come to the Temple,” Obi-Wan tells Vokara as he sits down next to her on the couch on his twenty-fifth nameday, still not looking a day over seventeen. At some point, they will all have to stop pretending Obi-Wan just looks young and face the fact that he does not age, and in fact might even be immortal. That day is not today. “I think the Force meant to take me somewhere far away from Coruscant. To protect me, maybe.”

“How would that have protected you?” Vokara asks.

“The Force is so strong here, but would have had to release me if I spent enough time away from Coruscant,” Obi-Wan says. “All that’s happened to me here at the Temple--my body, my soul--that wouldn’t have happened if it had let me go and sent me away.”

There is something peculiar about that phrasing, like the Force is personally set on Obi-Wan’s soul. The thing is, Vokara can’t exactly deny that the Force has special interest in him. Not after all this time of him sharing his soul with it, after all the times it has let him return despite how much it clearly wants to take him for itself.

Obi-Wan stirs his tea slowly and continues, “I think I would have found a way to manage the Force safely, and I’d have learned important things, then come back to Coruscant in a way that wouldn’t have it tear me apart. In that life, I’d still be all me. Not half me, half Temple.” He looks up at her. “I wouldn’t have a family in that life, though. Not a home, either.”

“We would always be your family. You can always find a home here in the Temple, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan is silent for a long moment, then says, “I thought everyone forgot about me when I went to Melida/Daan. Nobody came looking for me even after so much time. You all thought I’d died, so you weren’t _going_ to look for me, either. If I had no way to return to the Temple…I think I would have kept believing you had all forgotten me, and I wouldn’t have tried to return. Not until circumstances forced me to.”

“Then maybe in this other life there is a happy ending, too,” Vokara says. She can’t even imagine another world where Obi-Wan would be lost in the galaxy for so long, but he’s so resilient that she believes he would be able to survive just about anything. “For the record, I’m glad the Force brought you back to us. And I hope we are enough to keep you from letting go of yourself--you are certainly worth it to us, and you always will be.”

Obi-Wan leans against Vokara’s side. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to. The Force is patient---it’ll have all of eternity to keep me, so it’s only fair I have as much time here as I can.”

Vokara smiles. “Then I think you will be with us for a very long time indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, feel free to comment! I love hearing what people think :)
> 
> I also have a [Tumblr,](http://jessepinwheel.tumblr.com) if you're into that sort of thing. Come hang out!


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